Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar

(Ph.D. Bar-Ilan University) Served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence specializing in Syria, Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups, and Israeli Arabs. Expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. Email: [email protected]

On October 13, 1921, the Kars Agreement was signed in the town of Kars in eastern Anatolia (Western Armenia). This agreement redrew, in Turkey’s favor, the Kars-Ardahan-Artvin border between Turkey and the Caucasus republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, an area that had been stripped from Turkey by the post-WWI Sèvres peace treaty. While there are irredentist trends in the now independent Caucasian republics that wish to invalidate the Turkish claim, they are being restrained by present day realities.

Post-Qaddafi Libya is divided between two governments, and the consequence of that division is mounting chaos. Europe, the US, Canada, and the UN will have to decide at what point it will be necessary to go back into Libya to restore order.

Much has been published against the new Israeli Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. Many, both in Israel and abroad, ask: Why is it necessary? How can it comport with democracy? Where does it leave minorities, particularly Muslim-Arabs, who make up some 20% of the Israeli population?

Hamas has failed because it is caught between two irreconcilable principles: establishing a modern, functioning state that provides for its citizens while at the same time maintaining a perpetual state of war against the Jewish State. Neither the PLO’s nationalist ideology nor Hamas’s religious nationalism have served the interests of the Palestinian people. Only emirates based on local clans can operate legitimately in the Palestinian-controlled territories.

The existence of a living Jewish people in a functioning Jewish state threatens the very raison d’être of Islam, which came into being to render Judaism obsolete. For that reason, Arabs and Muslims will never accept Israel as the Jewish State.

Speculation is rife about the possibility of normalizing relations between Israel and the nations of the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar). If such negotiations do take place, the Israeli government will need to approach them in such a way as to avoid repeating mistakes that were made in the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan.

Arab and Muslim leaders hope to stoke sufficient anxiety among world leaders to stop them from following President Trump’s lead in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In effect, they hope to ensure that Muslim threats are given veto power over the decisions by world powers on this matter. But the objections to recognition are specious, ahistorical, and hypocritical. All countries should reject Muslim revisionism and join Trump in his action – which is, after all, simply acknowledging a 3,000-years-long reality.

Israel should not do the bidding of the divided and bankrupt Arab world and strive to contain Tehran’s hegemonic ambitions at an exorbitant human and material cost. Nor should it trust its Arab neighbors to offer genuine peace once the Iranian threat is eliminated.

In view of Saudi Arabia’s deep concern over Iran’s ascendancy, Israel is presented with a unique opportunity to dictate terms of engagement to the kingdom. It is unwise for Israel to tip its hand by displaying fawning enthusiasm over the slightest gesture by the Saudis.

Israel would be unwise to rush into a peace agreement with the Palestinians based on the urging of the “moderate Sunni axis” with which it currently shares common cause against Iran. The Kurdish experience, as well as the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, prove that Israel cannot depend on fair-weather allies to protect its own security.

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Moderate leaders warn that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may turn from a national conflict into a religious one. Right-wing leaders claim it has been a religious conflict from the start. Both approaches have been applied to the Temple Mount crisis, and both are affected by a totalist perception of the understanding of the religious imperative.

The concept of “settler colonialism” has been applied with almost unique vehemence against Israel. But the fact that Jews are the indigenous population of the Southern Levant can be proved with ease. In contrast, historical and genealogical evidence shows Palestinians descend primarily from three primary groups: Muslim invaders, Arab immigrants, and local converts to Islam. The Muslim conquest of Byzantine Palestine in the 7th century CE is a textbook example of settler-colonialism, as is subsequent immigration, particularly during the 19th and 20th centuries under the Ottoman and British Empires. The application of the concept to Jews and Zionism by Palestinians is both ironic and unhelpful.

North Korea’s nuclearization has implications for Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture. There are several plausible means by which a nuclear conflict could arise in the Middle East. It may be time to consider a phase-out of Israel’s “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” and to focus Israeli planning around evaluations of enemy rationality.

Former PM Ehud Barak’s arguments in favor of withdrawal from Judea and Samaria undercut Israel’s security and are a departure from the Oslo Accords’ security vision. Israel would be wise to present President Trump with actual facts on this issue.

Many American detractors of Israel begin by citing that Israel receives the lion’s share of US military aid. The very suggestion conjures the demon of an all-powerful Israel lobby that has turned the US Congress into its pawn. But these figures, while reflecting official direct US military aid, are almost meaningless in comparison to the real costs and benefits of US military aid – above all, American boots on the ground. In reality, Israel receives only a small fraction of American military aid, and most of that was spent in the US to the benefit of the American economy.

The Oslo diplomatic process is the starkest strategic blunder in Israel’s history and one of the worst calamities ever to have afflicted Israelis and Palestinians. Twenty three years after its euphoric launch on the White House lawn, the Oslo ‘peace process’ has substantially worsened the position of both parties, and made the prospects for peace and reconciliation ever more remote.